Kangaroo Paw by Claire Miranda Roberts, Vagabond Press, 2023

At a time when there is more poetry being published than ever before, one could be forgiven for missing certain publications. In the case of Claire Miranda Roberts’ first collection, Kangaroo Paw, such an oversight would be doing the reader a great disservice. 

Published by Vagabond Press, the title and cover, showing the titular flower, presents the reader with a passageway into a poetic landscape that feels simultaneously dream-like and firmly set within the psyche. The word that comes to mind when reflecting on the work contained within, is immersion, both within the poems and for the reader. It becomes apparent, when reading, how Roberts can create such painterly images, given her acknowledgement of training as an artist, as written in the collection’s excellent Afterword.

Despite being Roberts’ first collection, hers is a voice that springs from the page fully formed. The collection opens with ‘Armillaris’, referencing the native Australian plant, immediately placing the human body, and connection, within the natural landscape, where the ‘clasps of calyx’ almost evoke the image of a human hand grasping. Roberts’ ability to marry this imagery with human observation is a stunning device reminiscent of haiku, displayed in the poem’s beautiful closing lines:

duplicate saplings
are shyness—

the extension of
politeness to a stranger.”

 The formatting of these poems creates a delicate music that allows the imagery and lyricism to drive the work, employing unique syntax and spacing.

We see the process of human experience; longing, desire, and melancholy, as the poet considers the internal conflict of the self in contrast to nature’s clarity, such as in “Snowdrop Sonnet”:

I want their solitude—a cloister I observe
from above their white perfume—

Roberts’ lyricism is often intentionally understated, balanced deftly beside evocative and arresting natural imagery, such as in ‘Cenchrus’, where 

frayed
flower spikes
turning to rust

rustle the         wind
and make a thread
with my life—”

This recurrence of flowers often positions the poet, not as a partial observer, but as an integral part of the natural world within these lines.

In the poems of Claire Miranda Roberts, nature serves as a mask, as if its beauty is shielding the author from the horrors of reality. 

 ‘Window’ opens with the startling lines “I used to love the world more/and myself”. The observer is always revealed to be an active participant in the world, even when attempting to retreat from it. Reflection and memory are inescapable, and the physical window is revealed to be a mirror turning on the self, as “a testimony/stares out the window”.

Roberts’ skill as a practitioner of poetry is as much comparable to the work of painter Margaret Olley, as to her contemporaries; that is how vivid the imagery in these poems is. But the achievement in how language is harnessed in order to construct these finely written poems, cannot be understated.

Delicate and wrenching in equal measures, despite the unrelenting beauty of its imagery, Kangaroo Paw is an astounding debut collection. 

 – Robbie Coburn

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Robbie Coburn is a poet based in Melbourne. His books include The Other Flesh and Rain Season, and he has also published several chapbooks, including Before Bone and Viscera, published by Rochford Street Press in 2014. His poems have been published inPoetry, Meanjin, Island,  Westerly, and elsewhere, and anthologised in books including Writing to the Wire and To End All Wars. Ghost Poetry, a new poetry collection, is forthcoming from Upswell Publishing in 2024.

Kangaroo Paw is available from https://vagabondpress.net/products/claire-miranda-roberts-kangaroo-paw

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